


blindly snap the broken beats

by chalmskinn



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Blending In, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Drabble, Hiding, London, M/M, Memories, Oral Sex, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Mid Credits Scene, Recovery, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 06:53:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6792076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chalmskinn/pseuds/chalmskinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He’d been stung by a bee when he was young, he remembers. He was wearing knee high socks, shorts, suspenders that dug into his shoulders, and there was dirt on his hands, and there was a bee. He was young enough that the pain made him cry, and Steve’s mom was a nurse, so he climbed the fire escape to their apartment, glassy eyes, and a throbbing thigh, and rapped on the window.</i>
</p><p>Steve and Bucky are hiding in London after the prison break. Bucky is filling in his fragmented memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	blindly snap the broken beats

Smoke curls into the hard London sky, with icy breath and tiny particles of ash, destined for anywhere other than the grimy ashtray below a steady right hand. They have a few weeks.The data states that he was a smoker in his prime, but who wasn’t. The taste of the tobacco isn’t familiar, but the convenience store was small and crowded with colourful packets of candy, lottery tickets, and packs of beer. Mayfair, they’re shit. The first carton to catch his eye, and the brand between his thick fingers. They don’t stock Lucky Strike in London, Steve says, but they would have tasted equally as foreign to his lungs. But the action, the way he holds the cigarette, the way he inhales and exhales, it’s muscle memory, and although he does not particularly recall smoking, it is comforting. The detail is insignificant, but it now pieces its way into the fragments of his memories, fleshes them out. It explains the pangs of guilt that throb in his shoulders when he remembers moving a sickly Steve from the couch to the springy mattress they shared on the floor, and Steve awakening from a fever dream with a shallow cough, because he hadn’t changed his smoke saturated clothes before moving him. Steve does not hold that against him, never did and never will, but rather had explained that the scent, combined with his aftershave and musk, was one that made him feel safe.

Among his Soldier dreams, he also dreams of a tiny Steve slipping from him, a pile of bones and illness, and he, a ball of regret and guilt.

He can see the financial district from their balcony. There were files detailing an assassination executed atop the roof of one of these tall, glass buildings, deep into the eighties, but he can’t recall it, though he has accepted it. The brief conversation he’d had with Sam on the helicopter from the prison to Wakanda had lessened his guilt slightly, but the severity of his past still stings like a million of angry hornets. He’d been stung by a bee when he was young, he remembers. He was wearing knee high socks, shorts, suspenders that dug into his shoulders, and there was dirt on his hands, and there was a bee. He was young enough that the pain made him cry, and Steve’s mom was a nurse, so he climbed the fire escape to their apartment, glassy eyes, and a throbbing thigh, and rapped on the window. He remembers this distinctly because of the sting. Steve was drawing at the kitchen table, and his face lit up when he noticed Bucky at the window. Sarah hadn’t been in, so Steve cleaned and wrapped the sting with the softest, most delicate of touches, and then he brought Bucky some warm milk. Bucky stayed until Sarah returned deep into the evening, and she smiled, checked the sting, and kissed him on his forehead with her soft lips. Lips she’d given to Steve: thin top, pillowy bottom - the colour of raspberries. The rest of Steve came from his dad, but only Sarah knew for sure.

Rebecca is still alive. He’d watched her before he made passage to Europe, she lived in Philadelphia, and had two grandchildren, which meant that he was an uncle, and the middle namesake of his grandnephew. Steve found it amusing that although Bucky was technically 99, his grandnephew Scott was older than him by a year. Similar looking too, but a web designer half his weight, and three inches taller. He had written to her, but had given Steve the letter to post when he felt both appropriate and safe, Becca needn’t be a pawn in the political and judicial shitstorm they had found themselves directly in the middle of. He knows the way the world’s governments work, and he’d watched the first three seasons of Homeland, so it seemed obvious not to involve an 82 year old in their crap.

But they were doing okay in London. T’Challa had lent them his modest apartment, near Waterloo, near the Wakandan Embassy, for however long they were hiding in London for. Steve had grown a beard and had taken to wearing Clark Kent-esque glasses, and Bucky had cut his hair similar to what the photographs show as his 1943 hair, short, back and sides, with a floppy bang hanging in his eyes. He’d shaven too, and wore a skin over his arm, again, given by T’Challa in apology, though it felt as though he was in the debt of the young king himself. Sam was to meet them in a few weeks after he’d sorted out some business (“someone’s gotta water my garden”). Bucky wasn’t thrilled, but Steve bounces cheerfully every time he mentions Sam’s arrival. They’re good for each other. Sam is a good man, a kind man, smart, interesting and incredibly handsome. Though, angry and a bit cold towards Bucky (due to the Soldier’s attempts on his life), but slowly warming. Clint and Wanda are very welcoming, and Scott just doesn’t stop talking, but Sam is the one he has to impress and gain forgiveness from, which he understands will be difficult. It must be very irritating to go from being shot at by somebody, to shooting for them.

He understands that they have to regroup, reconnect and re-plan their world saving efforts, but he wishes that it didn’t have to come so soon. He enjoys this domesticity with Steve (ignoring Steve’s forays of bringing justice to the London criminal underworld, and his meticulously detailed plans to take down remaining Hydra cells), their trips to the museums, the galleries, to Oxford Street and to High Street Kensington; to places that neither of them have seen since their short period of leave during the Blitz. The Globe hadn’t been there then, nor had the Tate Modern, or really any of the things that they find themselves doing during their free time. Bucky wishes they were in New York. It pains him, and he knows Steve feels the same. London reminds him of Peggy, and the Commandos, and of Bucky’s ‘death’, but of course they can’t be at home. And though home is wherever Steve is, they are not always together. Steve has taken a part-time job in a French family owned cafe, where they pay cash-in-hand, and Steve can observe, and draw.

Bucky smokes a lot. It gives him something to do, other than poring over pages upon pages of SHIELD and Hydra files, giving him headaches from switching languages, and the glaring screens. He writes up his notes in Russian. It feels more organised to him. And Steve’s Russian is basic at best, despite Natasha’s best efforts in the past. Bucky throws the butt of his cigarette from the balcony, and watches the embers fall down the hundreds of stories, to the rain-wet sidewalk, where a Christian Louboutin skewers it on the stiletto heel. They are going to watch The Tempest at the Sam Wanamaker Theatre tomorrow evening. Steve tells him that he’d been in The Tempest as Ferdinand in his senior year of high school to great regard. He remembers Gigi McConnell was his Miranda, and her hair was as soft and as pale as silk, and her breasts were small and fit his steady, sniper’s hands perfectly. He’d turned his body to face Steve that evening, and with a smirk upon his usually stoic face, had said, “I ate her out in the costume cupboard on opening night. You were pissed at me, because I was late out.” Steve had chuckled, shut the laptop and closed his eyes to sleep.

He is reading when Bucky walks into the master bedroom, smelling cold and smoky. T’Challa had made sure the apartment had three bedrooms, though they had only used one, but they had appreciated the thought when they walked in for the first time. Bucky takes off his leather jacket, and puts his cigarettes and lighter on his side table, and Steve dog-ears the page of his book (‘On the Road’), and beams at Bucky, blinking slowly, one eye at a time, like an adoring cat. Bucky strips down to his boxer briefs, takes the skin-sleeve off from his left arm, and climbs into bed besides Steve. “Is it raining outside, Buck?” Steve combs Bucky’s damp hair out of his face with his right hand, and Bucky holds onto that hand with his metal digits.

“Yeah, Einstein, it’s not like I went swimmin’ is it?” He brings himself closer to Steve, and presses a damp kiss to the dip in his left collarbone. “You know, when I was in the high school play, and I was late by some fifteen minutes, why was it you were so pissed, Stevie?” Bucky’s mouth curls into a mischievous smile as he hears Steve’s breath catch in the base of his throat. He traces his metal fingers across Steve’s ribcage.

Steve breathes in heavily through his nostrils, and makes thinking noises, as Bucky’s mouth moves down from the collarbone to his eternally perky nipple. He breathes heavy again. “It was cold, and I was hungry.” Bucky raises an eyebrow, and his cherry-red mouth lifts from Steve’s chest, and Steve glares disappointed. “Why’d you stop?”

A low laugh rumbles in Bucky, and he bites Steve’s shoulder. “‘Cause you’re lyin’! It was June, it was nice! I’m meant to be the amnesiac here, not you, Stevie.” He pulls the duvet from Steve, and slides down the bed, his knees bracketing plaid pyjama clad calves. His hands ghost over the soft, straining material, and Steve’s eyes roll back. Bucky lowers the pants to Steve’s knees, and with a smirk, places a light kiss to the rapidly hardening shaft of Steve’s cock. “You gonna tell me, Stevie? My memory ain’t too good, and I’m tryin’ to fill the gaps here and there. Wanna know why you were angry so I don’t do it again.” Bucky leans his head on Steve’s stomach.

Steve’s thigh twitches, as does his nose, and his presses his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, broken repeatedly and unfixable to Erskine’s serum, but character giving. “You came out Buck, and your hair was a mess, and your lips were sinful, and in my head, boy, was I doing my Hail Marys. And then I went to hug you, to congratulate you, and it was overwhelming, you didn’t smell like Bucky, you smelled like Gigi, so much Chanel, I was drowning in it. I knew you’d been in the play together, but I was going crazy!” Bucky nods, and he licks the head of Steve’s member, and sucks the tip into his mouth. “Ah, Buck, I’ve been in love with you forever, and you smelled like her, and I wanted you to smell like me, be cocky about me, suck me off in the costume cupboard, you know?”

Bucky hums with laughter around Steve, and pulls his mouth from him slowly, “You want me to hang some capes up in here? ‘m sure T’Challa probably has some around.” Steve runs his fingers through the long part of Bucky’s hair, and guides him back to where he wants him, breathing rapidly through his nose, and shaking his head. “Nah? Okay.” Steve pulls on his hair, and Bucky groans, twitching against the bed, and swallowing down Steve’s cock to the root, tracing lightly on his balls. Steve thrusts up into the warmth of his mouth, and Bucky pulls off slightly, working his mouth up and down, his right hand at the base of the shaft. Steve pulls his hair again, harder, and he slides his mouth away, licking delicately at the slit, hand still upon him. Steve stills, and it is over in a blur.

He rolls away with his eyes closed, and feels Steve wiping his face with a wet wipe, pressing light kisses around and on his swollen lips. “I wish I could sleep, Stevie.” He murmurs, and opens his eyes to Steve’s bright blue stare. Steve holds his jaw, and kisses him deeply, tongue tracing tongue.

Steve pulls back, and kisses his forehead, and both cheeks, “You have time to learn.”

A few weeks, he wants to cry. “I have time. We have time.”

And Bucky pretend to sleep until he hears Steve’s deep snores. Then he watches the rise and fall of Steve’s chest, and he listens to the beat of his heart. 

Then, and only then, does he fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> i went to the midnight screening of civil war on the 28th of april or whenever it came out in the uk and started writing this that night. then i kind of forgot about it until i got back to uni and bought some cheese and my cheese was civil war themed (but where the frick are my winter soldier cheese strings? how have i got sharon carter cheesetrings and not my son?), so the night before my exam (it's in 11 hours haha!) i decided to finish this!!! i hope it was okay, i haven't written fan fiction in forever, and i normally write thorki so i'm praying!
> 
> and originally there wasn't going to be any sex in this at all. or bucky having watched homeland, but i can see him binge watching that u kno. but you write what you write, i guess. title from club foot by kasabian; i listened to that album on repeat the entire time i wrote this, i think it's a v bucky album.
> 
> thanks 4 reading :*


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